A Cat In Every Office

It’s been hectic around here for the past few months! We’ve been busy with projects, we moved into a more spacious office and *drum roll* we got a cat!

And he got Victor’s chair.

Our newest mascot here is Pepper. We adopted him back in December from a vet’s office – his previous owners left him and his brothers in a plastic bag at their front door and the vet said they reeked of cigarettes, but were otherwise healthy.

He was a tiny and skinny ball of energy and in only 3 months he’s grown into a chubby bastard who attacks legs, chews on notebooks and is afraid of plastic bags.

Don’t worry, buddy, you’re not going anywhere. We need our stapler.

Of course we got him because we kept reading about how having pets in the office increases productivity and reduces stress. Or we were just giving into our desperate desire to get a cat, one of the two.

A study from the Virginia Commonwealth University showed that bringing your pet to work will reduce work related stress throughout the day (by taking a break to pet a purring cat or play with a doggie) and will raise your levels of job satisfaction, while making you feel more positive towards your employer – pretty obviously, because a pet-friendly work environment shows that the company is open-minded, flexible and cares for employees.

“I always felt like if we had the conveniences of our homes, that we would never dread coming to the office.” – Jeff Suffolk, president of Human Movement Management

It’s been pretty well acknowledged that pets work wonders in the office, so many small and large companies either allow employees to bring pets at work or actually have their own office pets.

Google, for example, is famous for its love of dogs, Salesforce has a special communal room equipped with dog beds, padded cages and water bowls where six employees can work with their dogs by their sides and Autodesk doesn’t discriminate and lets people bring in all sorts of animals and offers an inclusive pet insurance discount.

Many smaller companies (radio stations, PR firms, lots of web development firms – like us!) adopt and keep cats in the office permanently – they only go home with volunteer employees on holidays when the office is empty.

A common sight around offices graced with cats.

Tokyo-based company Ferray Corporation has hit the news lately thanks to their big hearts – they took in 9 stray cats and gave them a permanent home in their office, all while encouraging employees to still bring their own pets to work. The employees say that having the cats near them to pet and watch as they do their silly antics has lowered their stress levels and improved their communication.

Except when the cats chew on cables and cut off their Internet connection.

We’ve noticed improvements ourselves, we’re definitely less stressed out and much happier every day since getting this cute bugger. Is your office pet-friendly? Because it should be.

Subscribe to our newsletter for more freebies, articles and other good stuff we'll send out from time to time.